
If I asked you, dear reader, to congratulate me on my restraint at October half-term, you might commiserate this time round …

If I asked you, dear reader, to congratulate me on my restraint at October half-term, you might commiserate this time round …

“There is differency between a grub and a butterfly;
yet your butterfly was a grub.” (Coriolanus, V, iv [a])
It would be too easy to blame my changed reading habits in 2018 on professional busy-ness, or on my health, but there’s no escaping a startling and depressing fact …